This year, much is the same. Our dossier for China has finally finished with all three of the certifications it receives and arrived safely in our agency's office on Friday. Our dossier should be en route to China (known as DTC or dossier to country) sometime this week! This is a major step in the China adoption process! Our approval has come from the U.S. to adopt a child with Down syndrome from China. And I am excited. I'm also terrified.
I mourn for Dasha every minute of every day. It's a feeling deep within my gut. I never feel quite right. The realizations of what should have been creep up on me unexpectedly. As I was changing out my youngest daughter's summer clothes for fall/winter clothes on Saturday, I broke down weeping in the storage shed. There are rows and rows of Rubbermaid bins that house all the clothes that she would have been wearing. The sense of loss and grief is palpable. I have great hope that if our Canadian friends are allowed to adopt her without interference from Russia and she is finally at home, safe with a family who loves her, that I will be able to let go of these feelings. I have been working a lot on letting myself feel the finality of it. She is not going to be my daughter. After a year of working tirelessly to welcome her into our home, the devastation of this is hard to put into words. My children still pray every single day that Meg will be able to come home to us. We all sense that she should be here, but she is not. It is unbearable to look at the hundreds of pictures and video we have of our time together. Our smiling faces, full of hope, joy, and a love so very deep...it's just too much.
We went to the Salt Lake Temple on Friday, October 4th, to be sealed to our precious Cooper. It was a beautiful, wonderful, bittersweet day. We invited only our immediate family and one of our dearest friends. I am so glad we kept it intimate. It was a deeply personal experience, full of both happiness and heartache.
It's very sad for me to look at Cooper's pictures. It's also very, very difficult to believe everything is going to be okay with our new little man, too. I know from Little Flower that our guy is quite fragile. A family that picked their son up from the same orphanage this last week was able to take three pictures of him. They said that the nannies are very nice, but there are only a few of them and rooms and rooms and rooms full of children. It's excruciating to look at pictures of him in his orphanage crib, all alone. I know the realities of life in an orphanage. I've lived in this world of orphan care for 15 months now. I have had over 100 hours of education on parenting an institutionalized child. I've visited an orphanage in Russia. I've seen hundreds of before and after pictures of orphans who were in bad shape before their adoptions. It's just different when you have an actual real time photo of the child you're fighting to make yours and you see how they're currently living. How he'll be forced to live for several more months. It's eating me up inside! We won't be invited to travel until late February or March. That feels forever away!
We continue to push forward, though. I believe now, more than ever, how important families are. I know in my heart of hearts that someday we'll have a child home with us. A former orphan. It's just been a very difficult road so far. My dream for next October is that Dasha will be home with her family in Canada, our China guy will be home with us, and everyone will be healthy, happy, and thriving! I have had many dreams destroyed this past year, but I've got no choice but to continue hoping for this one to come true!! Two children's very lives are depending on this dream!
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